


Death Date

by stardog_teeth



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Drug Use, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Johnlock - Freeform, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Depression, Sherlock's death day, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-20 20:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30010710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardog_teeth/pseuds/stardog_teeth
Summary: John tried to distract himself with a date on Sherlock's death day and ends up in Sherlock's arms.  I'm not used to writing romance, so please forgive the awkwardness and odd pacing.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	Death Date

John glanced at his cell phone again. No new messages. His leg bounced under the table.

“Am I boring you?” Abigail glared at him from across the table. “You keep checking your phone every few seconds. Is it another woman?”

John recoiled as if punched. “N-no, of course not! I’m just… it’s just… well, Sherlock…”

Abigail cut him off with a sharp laugh. “Of course it’s Sherlock. It’s always sherlock. I thought it was rubbish, what everyone was saying about you. That you care for him more than you could ever care for a woman.”

“Abby, it’s not like that, it’s just today is the anniversary…”

“Oh, you two have an anniversary now? And of course, you forgot our three-month anniversary last week. That’s what tonight is for, isn’t it? To make up for it?”

“No, nothing like that, I just needed to get out of the house tonight.”

“Of course this isn’t for me! What, are you and him having a little domestic? Needed to get away from your boyfriend for the night, and I am just what, a convenient excuse?”

“Love, you know it’s not like that!”

“Don’t you ‘love’ me, I’ve had enough. Either Sherlock Holmes is out or I am.”

John froze, blinking in shock at his girlfriend’s sudden proposed ultimatum. His mouth opened and closed a few times as he tried to come up with something to say.

“Seriously? Unbelievable. I’m out. Done. Goodbye, John Watson.” Abigail gathered her purse and coat and stormed off towards the exit without another look at John, who was still frozen, trying to process everything that had just happened. 

John’s phone screen lit up, breaking his trance. A text from an unknown number. Exactly what he had been fearing

Fearing, yet expecting.

The text read:

‘Now that that’s over, get to Baker Street now. He has disabled my cameras. I need you to keep an eye on him.’

Of-bloody-course Sherlock had disabled the cameras. Of-bloody-course Mycroft was just waiting for John’s date to end. At least he hadn’t sent a car for him in the middle of dinner, but Abigail surely would’ve been upset either way. As much as he wanted to be upset, John needed to know that Sherlock was okay. He knew how quickly these situations could turn into real danger. He couldn’t risk it getting that far… not again.

Paying for the half-eaten meal took too long. The cab ride was excruciating. It all took too damn long. He needed to be home _now_. 

He lept out of the cab so quickly that he almost forgot to pay the worried-looking cabbie. The front door was so close. He practically fell through it.

“Sherlock?” Was a plead shouted up the stairs.

No answer. The sitting room was empty.

“Sherlock?” Nearly a prayer as he sped down the hall.

Shaking hands reached for the doorknob and twisted. Pushed. 

It took John a moment to take in the room and realize what he was seeing. A thick fog filled the room and made him cough. Cigarette smoke. A dark shape curled up against the headboard. Sherlock was sitting knees-to-chest with his back against the headboard of his bed. 

“Sherlock, are you okay?” John knew his voice was shaking, but he did not care.

“I’m fine, I’m just… smoking.” Sherlock took a long, long drag from the cigarette resting between his lips and his slender fingers. There were several still-warm cigarette butts littering the bed around him. 

“Smoking inside? And disabling Mycroft’s cameras? I know you know what today is.” 

“You know I’m not one for sentiment and anniversaries, John.”

“I-I know, but…” John tried and failed to get a read on Sherlock’s face. Blank, as usual. “Can I sit?”

Sherlock nodded to the edge of the nearly empty bed. John sat down on it as gently as he could. He fiddled with his hands in his lap. 

“How was the date?”

The question stunned John. Since when did Sherlock care about that kind of stuff? Since when did Sherlock choose to remember that John was even seeing someone?

“Well, not great, honestly.” John tried to decide how truthful he wanted to be. Sherlock usually wasn’t one for gossip, especially about relationships. He hadn’t even batted an eye when John had broken things off with Mary months ago. “I don’t think I’ll be seeing Abigail again.” He decided to leave it at that.

Sherlock’s brow furrowed worryingly and his far-off gaze seemed to focus somewhere in the middle-distance.

“Sherlock, are you alright?” John knew how to deal with almost everything Sherlock could throw at him, but today, as he sat on the edge of the bed and watched his best friend sit and smoke, he got nothing. No hint of emotion for John to work with. 

Sherlock’s eyes slowly re-focused on John. 

“No.”

A deep quiet fell over the already hushed room.

“I do not want your pity, John. I can already see you thinking it.”

“Sherlock, hush. It’s okay. You can be not okay. I-I’m here, you know, and you can talk to me if you want to…” John struggled to find the right thing to say. He had only once before seen the lost look in Sherlock’s eyes. Only once, on that day. That day three years ago. 

“No, John, I cannot talk to you.” Sherlock’s tone was not angry or dismissive, but wholly broken. Just like it had been on that day. On that phone call. “You don’t need to hear me talk today.”

A moment of contemplative silence.

“You want to hear me talk? Sherlock, I don’t want to make you feel worse.”

Sherlock took a final drag from his cigarette and put it out gently on his bedsheets. The usually pristinely-made bed was covered in ash and cigarette burns, and the sheets were bunched up and untucked from the bed frame. 

“You need to get it out, John.”

John let out a long sigh. Of course, Sherlock was right. He was always right. “I’m not sure where to start- I’ve only ever talked about it with my… therapist.” John hesitated on the word, embarrassed. He never felt comfortable telling people about his therapist. Maybe it was his military background, maybe it was the close-minded father. “Sherlock, you could’ve told me. You could have called, written, anything. I thought I had really lost you. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t work, I was even thinking- thinking of….” He paused, suddenly aware of how much he was sharing. But he knew he had to get it out. “I was thinking of following in your stead. All I could think about for weeks was my handgun.”

Sherlock watched him carefully, reading everything he was thinking, most likely. 

“But then you came back, and I was so angry. I still am sometimes, honestly. Why couldn’t you trust me to know you were really alive? Molly knew, and your homeless network, Sherlock, am I really less important than a beggar whose name you can’t remember?”

“I wanted to tell you. I came close once, but Mycroft stopped me. We had to maintain the facade.”

“When have you ever let Mycroft stop you from doing anything?” John suddenly felt angry.

“It was different, we had to keep it all under wraps, and I was- I was using at the time. I’m sorry John,” Sherlock’s gaze was intense as John took in his words. 

“Oh, Sherlock,” John settled just a bit more onto the rumpled bed. He felt an ache in his chest. All of this jumping from worry to anger to regret to loss was certainly a lot for the soldier to take in. He tried to maintain what little composure he could, even though he knew Sherlock could see straight through it. 

“One word was all I would have needed.”  
“What would it have changed? I was out of the country for the time.”

“What would- what would it have changed? Sherlock, I thought you were dead for two years!” His voice raised louder than he expected. “I grieved for you! I mourned for you! I- I- I cried for you. For months, all I could think about was you, you being gone. You let me believe that you were gone when the whole time you were off running errands for Mycroft! It would have changed everything! I know you ‘don’t do emotions.’ but losing you was the hardest thing I have ever been through.” John was shocked at his sudden honesty. He owed no kindness or truthfulness to this man who had lied to him for two years. But it was all coming out now. “You were gone and I had nothing left. I was alone again in this horrible, crowded city, and all I got from the people around me was pity. I didn’t want pity, I wanted you back. I held out hope for so long that I’d come home from work one day and you’d be sitting on my sofa smiling like a smug bastard. But that never happened. You were gone. Really gone. Sherlock, you have no idea what that was like for me.” He was shaking slightly.

Sherlock was quiet for a long moment. His eyes were dark. “I missed you too. It hurt to leave you like that. I knew it was wrong then, but I had no other choice.”

“You had every choice! I could have kept the secret! Do you really trust me so little? After everything we’ve been through together? Did it all mean nothing to you? Because it meant everything to me. You- you-” John stopped himself abruptly. He knew what he was going to say, and that scared him. The same thing he had almost said to his therapist after the funeral. Had almost said so many times before but had always stopped himself. He sat, still shaking for a moment before Sherlock uncurled abruptly and pulled him into a tight hug. That did it. John broke. Wholly. Completely. Cracked in two, and the tears began to fall. They stayed pressed together as John sobbed loudly into Sherlock’s shoulder. John’s crying stopped instantly when he felt a wetness on his own shoulder as Sherlock shuddered against him. 

“John, I loved you.” Barely a whisper against his ear. Barely a breath. Barely a confession, but it sent an instant shock through the soldier. “I never wanted to leave you. I am so sorry.”

John pulled away to see Sherlock looking up at him with puffy, wet eyes and a sort of sadness John had never seen before.

“Don’t do this to me. Don’t make me say it. I can’t” If John said it, there would be no going back. But did he really want to go back?

“You don’t need to say anything, John, just listen. I loved you. I needed you. You kept me right. You were always there. Those two years away were torture, I had to stay high or I would think of you, I would try to convince Mycroft to let me see you. John Watson, I love you.”

The words sunk into the very core of John. Words that haunted the back of his mind every day since he realized they were true, years ago. The very day they met. His response came out like a prayer, the true desire of the heart confessed, spoken at last. “I love you.”

One heartbeat passed

Then another.

Then the next.

The world did not cave in. The stars did not fall. Life did not end. The world went on and would continue to go on, with or without them. 

Years of a bond unspoken culminated in this one tear-stained moment. Years of lying to himself and trying to repress what he knew was true, and here he was. A broken soldier in love with an undead detective. What a pair they were. 

They sat in silence for many moments, neither daring to break the perfect silence that shielded them. Finally, Sherlock took John’s hand in his. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long, but I was afraid that you didn’t feel the same. You were always so quick to tell everyone who assumed it that we were not together and that you were not gay.”

“I’m not. Gay. I think. Well, I’m not sure what I am, but I guess I’m not fully straight, either. But I’ve loved you for a long time. Years. I tried to repress it, push it down to where it couldn’t hurt me. And when you died, I thought I would take that with me to the grave, too. But now you’re here and I’ve finally said it. What does this mean- for us?”

“It can mean whatever you want. We don’t have to be… together if you don’t want to, I don’t want to force anything, but…” Sherlock looked lost. “I really don’t know. I’ve never been with anyone before.”

Oh. John had almost forgotten. Sherlock, for all his intelligence and calculations, didn’t know how to be a person, not in the way that John did.

“I think- I think we should take things slow. No labels, just us. Just see where things go, yeah?”

“Yes, I like that. Slow.” Sherlock looked more confident now, as he always did when he had a plan. “Can we just stay like this for a while?”

“Yes. Of course. Yes.” John’s response was quick, almost desperate. He took Sherlock’s other hand, and they sat together in silence for a long, long time, the cigarettes on the side table and the failed date long forgotten. 

Outside, a gentle snow began to fall as the street lights flicked on for the night. The cold crept across the city, but inside 221B Baker Street, the lovers were warm for the first time in years. 

**Author's Note:**

> There was a lot more I wanted to say with this one, but I just couldn't decide how to fit it all. Maybe one day I'll make a part 2, but we'll see.


End file.
